This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument, and more particularly to an improvement of an electronic musical instrument of the waveform memory device readout type.
An electronic musical instrument of the waveform memory readout type has been known wherein a musical waveform prestored in a waveform memory device is read out according to an address signal corresponding to the tone pitch of a depressed key to produce a musical tone.
With the electronic musical instrument of the waveform memory readout type, once the waveform to be stored in the waveform memory device is determined, the tone color of the produced musical tone is the same for all tone ranges so that the tone color of the musical tone is respective tone ranges does not change as in a natural musical instrument in which harmonics are abundant in a low tone range while the harmonics are less in a high tone range.
To obviate this difficulty it has been proposed to provide an electronic musical instrument in which a keyboard is divided into a plurality of tone ranges and waveform memory devices are provided for respective tone ranges so as to produce musical tone waveforms having different waveforms in respective tone ranges, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,213,366.
In this electronic musical instrument, however, it is necessary to provide waveform memory devices of the same number as the number of the divided tone ranges with the result that the size of the electronic musical instrument becomes large and its manufacturing cost increases.